Tarantula is a fictional character, a supervillain appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. He acts as a patriotic enforcer for the oppressive dictatorship of the fictional South American country of Delvadia, essentially a Delvadian equivalent to Captain America. Visually, his defining marks are his red stretch costume with a black tarantula on its chest and the poisonous stingers attached to his boots. The character was killed off in the early 1980s, but the Tarantula identity has been carried on by a series of successors.